The team behind Pixelmator has posted a lengthy apology on their blog following the discovery of a bug that would sometimes cause Macs to restart or the app to crash when intensively using the popular image editor.

It turns out, the newest Nvidia Geforce graphics card drivers in OS X 10.8.2 are causing the issue, and Pixelmator is working with Apple to resolve the issue.

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Everything we do at Pixelmator Team is aimed at making your favorite app the best in the world. With every minor update, we strive to live up to a high-quality standard. We even put aside new features, such as layer styles, for the sake of quality improvements. So far, we are happy with what we've achieved. However, there is one issue we wanted to talk about a little bit more.
A month or so ago, after the most recent OS X update (10.8.2), we've bumped into a problem that causes certain Macs to restart when intensively using Pixelmator. Sometimes, the app would stop responding without restarting a computer, or just cause some graphical glitches.

We did everything to find the root cause of the problem. We've researched a vast amount of information about OS X internals. We've torn down our Macs. We even reached out to Apple. Finally, the picture was clear: It's an issue with Nvidia Geforce graphics card drivers.

Although the issue isn't with Pixelmator, we didn't give up. We've searched for various workarounds, and then, we checked with you to see if any of them helped (thanks so much for being so patient and for taking the time to test those workarounds). But in the end, nothing worked.

Good thing, though--the guys at Apple are very helpful, and as soon as we hear about a solution, we'll let you know about it that very moment.

A few years back Nvidia shipped faulty graphics cards that would cause the whole system to overheat over time and cause other problems. Apple banned them for a while on their systems and it looks like Nvidia is back at it again. They better straighten up or they will lose a HUGE customer(apple).

A few years back Nvidia shipped faulty graphics cards that would cause the whole system to overheat over time and cause other problems. Apple banned them for a while on their systems and it looks like Nvidia is back at it again. They better straighten up or they will lose a HUGE customer(apple).

Who writes Nvidia's Apple drivers, Nvidia or Apple themselves? Regardless, isn't it Apple's responsibility to properly test graphics drivers, especially given the mere handful of them officially supported on their hardware?

My pixelmator was really beachballing when I was dealing with some simple art (files were not large but the canvas dimensions were) and I never had had an issue before so I was wondering why this was happening. Its on a 15" 2010 macbook pro so it does have one of those discrete chips in it. I think I deleted pixelmator and installed photoshop instead which just is better but I hate how photoshop installs all of these other things I don't need and clutters up my applications folder even when I do a minimal install

Unfortunately, since VERSION 2.0 when I became a customer, I noticed that this app suffers from memory corruption on very large images, especially if I leave them open and multitask for hours or days. Repeating patterns will appear on the image, actual corruption of the image itself. This is on MBP w/Geforce as well as MBP w/HD 3000 and MBA w/HD 4000.

Also I have no idea why they would tear apart their macs to solve this problem. That does not make any sense at all, it just makes them sound amateur

Pixelmator rocks... just started using it after switching through 7 other photo editors over the last 4 years. I appreciate a company that shares info like this and will be a proponent even more now. Best software on the planet and I got mine on th App store for only 14.99!!!!!!!!!! worth 5-6 times that easy.

These are older cards. AS I recall those drivers were never amazing. The 9400m and 320m were integrated graphics. Their choice was to use one of those or accept intel's GMA graphics. I'd say they made the right choice.

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Originally Posted by goodcow

Who writes Nvidia's Apple drivers, Nvidia or Apple themselves? Regardless, isn't it Apple's responsibility to properly test graphics drivers, especially given the mere handful of them officially supported on their hardware?

It is. You're buying a system from Apple, not building one yourself. It should have decent drivers. On Windows AMD seems to have more driver bugs. I'd probably prefer them under OSX if it wasn't for the use of CUDA in some applications.

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Originally Posted by SeattleMoose

Pixelmator is probably my most used application besides web and mail. Love to mess with photos and improve them.

The PM team is VERY responsive and forthcoming with information. That just binds me even closer to the product. Honesty and acknowledgement of "oops" increase customer base confidence.

Secrecy and silence have the opposite effect...

I have creative suite, and yet I still intend to purchase Pixelmator just to see what it can do. Adobe neglected many things for years in Photoshop. The brushes sampled in a really horrible way, and the pressure sensitive shape dynamics were pretty bad compared to some of the other software packages. It was still usable, but it made some things unecessarily tedious. Some things didn't work well meaning they required more work.

A few years back Nvidia shipped faulty graphics cards that would cause the whole system to overheat over time and cause other problems. Apple banned them for a while on their systems and it looks like Nvidia is back at it again. They better straighten up or they will lose a HUGE customer(apple).

Nvidia is not likely to be at fault in this case so I doubt Apple will blame nvidia. Apple co-develops the graphics drivers that nvidia publishes for its cards. More than likely this is a fault of the changes made by apple in the last patch.

A few years back Nvidia shipped faulty graphics cards that would cause the whole system to overheat over time and cause other problems. Apple banned them for a while on their systems and it looks like Nvidia is back at it again. They better straighten up or they will lose a HUGE customer(apple).

Just ask all the 2010 15" MBP owners with the GT330 cards....since ML if you use an external monitor or HDMI out, on occasion you will get a black screen or kernel panic coming out of sleep or when disconnecting the monitor. It is so bad that Apple is replacing the logic boards under a special warranty exention for three years from purchase date. Odd thing is, it is only under ML. Apple fixed it with a patch for Lion but something about ML cannot be fixed...but why a logic board replacement? Points to a chip defect to me that software cannot work around.

Nvidia is not likely to be at fault in this case so I doubt Apple will blame nvidia. Apple co-develops the graphics drivers that nvidia publishes for its cards. More than likely this is a fault of the changes made by apple in the last patch.

Apple only writes the front end of the graphics subsystem. The actual drivers are written by Nvidia, who sometimes publish updated ones on their website before they're rolled into the Apple point updates.

Just ask all the 2010 15" MBP owners with the GT330 cards....since ML if you use an external monitor or HDMI out, on occasion you will get a black screen or kernel panic coming out of sleep or when disconnecting the monitor. It is so bad that Apple is replacing the logic boards under a special warranty exention for three years from purchase date. Odd thing is, it is only under ML. Apple fixed it with a patch for Lion but something about ML cannot be fixed...but why a logic board replacement? Points to a chip defect to me that software cannot work around.

I remember that particular bug. AFAIK it was more related to switching between the integrated and discrete graphics. It is solved by a logic board replacement. However, for me, it was never the dedicated card that caused the crashing, it was the integrated.

I would like to love Pixelmator, but I just can't use that horribly black user interface. How they came up with that, and thought it was great is beyond me. Absolutely unuseable.

I quite like the black user interface--it just seems to get out of the way, very clean and uncluttered. It was a little abrupt using it the first time, coming from an older version PS with the light grey UI, but even PS has moved to a darker interface now.